Computer networks have become ubiquitous in business, industry, and education. In one approach, a network is configured with one or more user accounts, each of which is uniquely associated with a human network user or host computer. The network also has one or more resources, such as application programs that provide various computing functions, which are available to all users. In this approach, a user logs into his or her user account, selects a desired application. A disadvantage of this approach is that every user has the same rights to access any of the network resources.
Development of the globally accessible, packet-switched network known as the Internet has enabled network resources, accounts and applications to become available worldwide. Development of hypertext protocols that implement the World Wide Web ("The Web") is enabling networks to serve as a platform for global electronic commerce. In particular, the Web is enabling the easy exchange of information between businesses and their customers, suppliers and partners.
Businesses are rushing to publish information on the Web and just as quickly stumbling into several roadblocks. For example, some information is valuable and sensitive, and needs to be made available only to selected users. Thus, there is a need to provide selective access to network resources and information over the Web.
This need exists in the context of internal Web networks that are available to employees of an organization, called Intranets, as well as Web networks and resources that are available to external customers, suppliers and partners of the organization, called extranets. Extranet users may require information from a large number of diverse sources, for example, product catalogs, customer databases, or inventory systems. There may be millions of potential users, the number of which grows dramatically as an organization prospers. Thus, there is a need for a large-scale system that can provide selective access to a large number of information sources for a large number of users.
Because some of the information sources are sensitive, there is a need to provide secure access to the information.
Current networks and Web systems, including Intranets and extranets, are expensive and complex to implement. These technologies also change rapidly. There is a need for any information access method or system to integrate with and use existing equipment, software and systems. There is also a need for method and system that is flexible or adaptable to changing technologies and standards.
One approach to some of the foregoing problems and needs has been to provide each network resource or application program with a separate access control list. The access control list identifies users or hosts that are authorized to access a particular application. As new users or hosts are added to the network, the access control lists grow, making security management more complicated and difficult. Use of a large number of separate lists also makes the user experience tedious and unsatisfactory.
Another disadvantage of the foregoing approaches is duplication of management processes. To add new users to the system, a network administrator must repeat similar access processes for each application or resource to be made available to the new users. The redundancy of these processes, combined with rapid growth in the number of users, can make the cost of deploying, managing and supporting a system unacceptably high.
Thus, there is a need for a mechanism to govern access to one or more information resources in which selective access is given to particular users.
There is also a need for such a mechanism that is equally adaptable to an internal network environment and to an external network environment.
There is a further need for such a mechanism that is easy to configure and re-search configure as new users and resources become part of the system.
There is still another need for such a mechanism that is simple to administer.